“Things which as effects presuppose others as causes cannot be reciprocally at the same time causes of these.”

All so-called moral interest consists simply in respect for the law.

War seems to be ingrained in human nature, and even to be regarded as something noble to which man is inspired by his love of honor, without selfish motives.

Human beings are never to be treated as a means but always as ends.

It is certainly a bad sign of common sense to appeal to it as a witness.

To be is to do.

But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.

Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.

Freedom, is a property of all rational beings.

Nature is beautiful because it looks like Art; and Art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as Art while yet it looks like Nature.

The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgement of reason, and perverts its liberty.

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Woman wants control, man self-control.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

The great mass of people are worthy of our respect.

Laughter is an affect resulting from the sudden transformation of a heightened expectation into nothing.

The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.

She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.

It is the habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire.

He passes through life most securely who has least reason to reproach himself with complaisance toward his enemies.

Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.

Love of power, operating through greed and through personal ambition, was the cause of all these evils.

How dangerous can false reasoning prove!

Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.

What made the war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta.